Hi all!
I hope you all are enjoying the fall weather! Back in Houston, fall is the best season of the year because it is not at 100% humidity like the other 9 months of the year. What can I say… California does have the best weather!
Anyway, I wanted to share with y’all one of the coolest projects that I’ve worked on in my Building Science class: a cardboard chair, made out of solely cardboard… yes, yes, that means no adhesives whatsoever… that holds 200+ pounds! While the process was excruciatingly long and time-consuming, I was so proud of the outcome. The chair was only supposed to hold a max of 150 pounds, but mine held a few more, so that was exciting!
Three models later, I had the perfect design. I separated my design into two different segments: structure and skin. My structure consisted of an “egg crate” which is basically a grid of any shape (in my case, I did rectangles) sliced and inserted into one another, like so…
It was actually really difficult to insert and slot all the cardboard pieces together because the cuts had to be very precise. Because I made my egg crate too strong, it was difficult to insert. The more and more slotting I did, the more and more force I had to use to push it into place. I wasn’t strong enough (do you even lift, bro? No, I don’t. Probably explains why I couldn’t fit it all into place!), and so on the final piece i accidentally ripped it. BUT I managed to fix it and keep the same design as before just with a very minor tweak. My final product was an egg crate structure with a woven skin.
